"Those dog-fucking bastards..."
On the bridge of the Heart of Steel.
Peering through the targeting and surveillance optics at the pyramid of severed heads and blood-smeared walls over a dozen kilometers away, the captain of the Heart of Steel could not help cursing under his breath.
Glancing at the captain beside him, Chu Guang turned his eyes back toward the floor-to-ceiling windows of the bridge and spoke slowly.
"If they realize such provocations work, they'll soon build a second and a third skull pyramid. The moment they lose, they might even slaughter everyone."
"Those creatures are exceptionally keen on killing. There is no need for us to waste ammunition on meaningless targets."
From a practical standpoint, delivering indirect fire into densely packed concrete urban areas yielded very limited returns.
To say nothing of howitzers, which relied on fragmentation to inflict casualties, even strategic nuclear weapons with yields in the tens of thousands of tons were hardly as exaggerated against reinforced concrete shelters as movies depicted.
Records showed historical instances where, during an atomic detonation, people inside concrete buildings five to six hundred meters from ground zero survived without suffering long-term sequelae—provided they didn't foolishly run outside to take a look.
Mutants were an even clearer case.
Creatures like that could only be killed outright by lethal doses of neutron radiation; counting on the delayed effects of carcinogenesis to indirectly kill them was entirely unrealistic.
"...I understand," the captain said, nodding heavily.
At Chu Guang's signal, he turned to the adjutant beside him and barked an order.
"Drop anchor chains!"
The adjutant saluted sharply.
"Yes, sir!"
Massive steel anchor chains plunged from the airship's belly, slamming heavily into the ground and throwing up billowing clouds of dust.
Immediately afterward, the cargo elevators descended.
As vanguard troops and construction equipment were sequentially deployed to the surface, the decks above and below burst into activity.
After giving the captain a few brief instructions, Chu Guang turned and headed to the confinement cell, where he looked upon You'er, who was strapped into a wheelchair.
A virtual reality headset was fitted over his eyes, wired into the airship's targeting optics. At that moment, it was trained directly on that pyramid of human heads.
"Is this the paradise you were striving for?" Chu Guang said, looking at him.
You'er said nothing. He simply sat there in silence, as though he had not yet awakened from his sleepwalking state.
Yet Chu Guang knew full well that this man had been awake before dawn, merely feigning madness and stupor.
Chu Guang looked at him and continued, "Where is Sanctuary?"
After a long silence.
You'er suddenly let out a faint laugh, sounding as though he were mocking himself as much as everyone else.
"Don't you already know?"
"I know that Sanctuary is virtual. What I'm asking is where its server is." Pausing, Chu Guang added, "Or to put it another way, how do we destroy it?"
You'er maintained his uncooperative attitude with silence.
Chu Guang paid it no mind, continuing in a soft voice, "The bionic chip plugged into your brain locked away a portion of your memories. The specialists on our airship did find it troublesome, but you should know that cracking it is only a matter of time for us."
"Is that a bluff?"
"Not at all," Chu Guang said calmly. "The suggestion made to me was to send your brain to Ideal City for careful study. But if that happens, you won't have any chance at redemption."
"Redemption... haha."
You'er suddenly burst out laughing. Turning his VR-covered face toward Chu Guang, he raised his voice. "Why should I seek redemption? What crime have I committed? Compared to the people killed by the wasteland, compared to those turned into livestock or beasts by it, the handful of lives we sacrificed is utterly insignificant! Not to mention those people were already living like animals... Even if we had done nothing, they would have rotted away on their own."
"If you truly understood them, you'd know they are hopelessly stupid! They slip chains around their own necks and curse anyone who tries to lend them a hand! They want to be animals. I'd say they're more adapted to this wasteland than anyone, and more eager than anyone for it to go on forever! It's better to give their lives a shred of meaning. At least dying at our hands lets them serve as fuel to end the wasteland!"
You'er laughed hoarsely, his laughter spiraling into madness.
He sounded completely deranged.
Standing behind Chu Guang, Lü Bei glared fiercely at this twisted, insolent man, the corner of his mouth twitching involuntarily.
Chu Guang merely watched You'er with an impassive expression.
Only when You'er's throat grew hoarse and his laughter died out did Chu Guang slowly speak.
"Then who decides what this 'meaning' of yours actually is?"
You'er continued in a rasping voice, "No one needs to define it. The descendants living in the new world will naturally pass objective judgment on what we've done. Even if they curse us, it doesn't matter. I never did any of this for glory or renown in the first place."
Chu Guang looked at him with pity.
"What a shame."
"..." You'er said nothing, wearing an expression that said he couldn't care less what was said.
Chu Guang looked at him and went on, "Even if you reached a new world, your wasteland wouldn't end. That land would simply become a wasteland of another kind. And your sacrifice carries no meaning whatsoever. From start to finish, it's nothing more than your own self-gratification."
Unable to hold back any longer, You'er retorted, "How could you possibly know what future generations will think?"
"It's not a question of whether I know or not—it's a question of why you are so certain." Chu Guang stared at him, enunciating each word. "You haven't spent a single second living in the paradise of your fantasies, yet you expect to solve problems on the ground using methods from the heavens."
"When a person is starving, we give him the food he needs for basic survival, and then we teach him how to obtain more and how to live with greater dignity. We don't advise him to replace his stomach with a bionic one that can digest mud, or get a mouth that can gnaw through rocks."
You'er sneered coldly. "You're being far too simplistic. Do you think ending hunger will end the wasteland? If that were true, the wasteland wouldn't have existed in the first place. This isn't a problem of starvation—"
"At least starvation is a concrete problem. Only by solving it first can we tackle the next one," Chu Guang countered bluntly, his face expressionless. "You expect a single universal, optimal solution to all concrete problems—believing that turning into New Humanity will solve everything once and for all. And then what?"
You'er froze, stammering, "...And then?"
"Yes, and then what? How do you propose solving the problems of New Humanity? Design another lifeform even more perfect than New Humanity, and drag everyone into another 'evolution'? Or jump from one utopia to another?"
Seeing You'er struck dumb, Chu Guang continued, "Unfortunately, that is the problem-solving methodology you are leaving behind for posterity. If you fail, so be it. But if, against one-in-ten-thousand odds, you happen to succeed, that will be the greatest disaster of all."
"Any price will be rationalized as a necessary sacrifice. They will repeat today's tragedy again and again, drowning everyone else in an impossible dream. So tell me, am I the one being too simplistic, or are you?"
Withdrawing his gaze from that dazed face, Chu Guang knew the man had never considered any of this. He continued coldly, "Perhaps one day we will evolve into a new species, but that will only happen because we naturally arrived at that stage—never for the sake of evolving, or to solve a problem for the sake of solving it."
"I gave you a chance at redemption, but it seems I wasted my time."
"You'd better find somewhere else to repent."
Leaving those words behind, Chu Guang turned toward the door.
You'er stared blankly in the direction of the departing footsteps. A sudden surge of panic seized him, and he blurted out, "Wait!"
Chu Guang, having already reached the doorway, stopped in his tracks and looked back at him.
"What is it?"
After a brief silence, You'er spoke slowly.
"Sanctuary isn't on the 'ground,' nor is it housed inside some single server. It is a server array composed of countless bionic chips, linked into a vast network supported by one or more nodes... Sanctuary is that network."
A flicker of surprise crossed Lü Bei's face.
On one hand, he was astonished that Sanctuary was made of countless bionic chips; on the other, he was amazed that this stubborn, impenetrable prisoner had actually confessed.
Lü Bei was not the only one surprised. In truth, even You'er himself wasn't sure whether what he was doing was right.
The memory extractor had not merely ripped his memories out roughly; it had also brought back many trivial details he had long forgotten.
He was a researcher. He should have known better than anyone that bold hypotheses and meticulous verification were supposed to be the fundamental methodology.
Yet the irony was that despite knowing this full well, he had failed to uphold it, pinning his hopes instead on supplanting humanity with divinity.
Perhaps it was just as this Administrator before him had said.
The end of this dream was not paradise, but another kind of hell...
As he spoke, You'er slowly turned the wrist bound to the armrest, raising a bent index finger to point at his own head.
"For instance, right here... I have one. It's just that the reception here is poor, so it can't connect to the network."
The Heart of Steel was essentially a giant iron shell. Unless one stood out on the open deck, data exchange with the outside world had to pass through dedicated data interfaces.
Those channels were monitored by Xiao Qi. Luo Qian naturally wouldn't leave behind such an obvious vulnerability and walk straight into it.
This was also why Eclipse had been able to catch him off guard by using Zhao Tiangan's corpse to reactivate the powered-down chip and connect to Sanctuary.
The moment Zhao Tiangan died, Luo Qian had lost his connection to that chip; biochips required a living human body's metabolic activity to supply power.
Had they tried connecting through You'er's chip, they likely wouldn't have been able to enter Sanctuary at all, since his capture was already common knowledge.
Chu Guang frowned slightly. "Distributed computing?"
You'er smiled self-deprecatingly. "It's not quite the same, but you can understand it that way... Every chip is a cell constituting 'Luo Qian' and that 'Sanctuary.' All the cells share intelligence across the common network. When one of the chips goes offline, the data stored within it exists as an independent personality. For example, right now inside my head, there is a Luo Qian living in it."
Chu Guang fell into thought.
"I see."
This was actually quite similar to Xiao Qi.
Whenever Chu Guang entered an area without signal coverage, Xiao Qi could still communicate with him through his VM or other electronic devices. But in reality, the one talking to him was not the Xiao Qi inside the shelter, but a sub-instance branched off from Xiao Qi at Time Point A.
For ease of understanding, call the primary entity A and the sub-instance A1.
A1 possessed all the cached data prior to Time Point A, along with the combined computational power of all portable terminals available.
Therefore, even though A1 did not have all of A's data and computational capacity, it could still converse with him normally. It was simply that due to the communication disruption, data was not shared between A1 and A.
Once the signal was restored, however, data would flow between A1 and A once more, merging them back into one through the exchange of information.
While thinking about it from a human perspective might seem strange, for digital lifeforms it was completely ordinary.
After all, information was the entirety of a digital lifeform's existence.
It was precisely because of this that Xiao Qi was always clingy, pestering Chu Guang to take her along whenever he went on a long journey.
Luo Qian was likely a similar existence.
Every chip stored a fragment of Sanctuary. Under normal communication conditions, all the chips together constituted the entire server array.
The loss of a single chip was inconsequential to him. Even with just one chip and a single brain, he could still exist.
It was just that, constrained by limited computational power, doing anything under those conditions would be quite inconvenient.
Unlike Chu Guang, who had slipped into contemplation, Lü Bei's expression shifted, and he couldn't help asking, "Countless chips... just how many are there?"
If that Luo Qian had planted a thousand, or even ten thousand chips in Jinhe City, wouldn't this be endless?
They couldn't very well behave like mutants and chop off everyone's head, could they?
Even to wipe out the Church of the Torch, that was far too extreme.
Giving everyone's brain a CT scan was equally unrealistic.
Bionic chip implantation surgeries were typically performed very covertly, using specialized carbon-based materials that standard MRIs couldn't detect at all—let alone a makeshift frontline laboratory.
To root out every single one without exception, they would need at least the scanning bed back at the shelter. Alternatively, they would have to use the memory extractor to search visible memories frame by frame for traces of active bionic chips.
You'er shook his head. "Aside from the Bishop himself, nobody knows the exact number... Probably not even the Holy Son."
Pausing, he added, "However, it's unlikely that everyone was fitted with one. After all, I've heard those things are produced by a black box, and black boxes have operational lifespans. For example... peripheral Apostles like Zhang Zhengyang don't have implanted chips. He had to communicate with Luo Qian through us."
"That makes sense," Chu Guang nodded.
He recalled Heya mentioning that most of the black boxes in Shelter 117 were for bionic organs.
The first black box he had recovered from Shelter 117 was a neural interface unit capable of fabricating brain-computer interfaces.
Later, the Church of the Torch had even attempted to recover that black box and the former shelter overseer's administrator logs from him, only to fail.
After pondering for a moment, Chu Guang continued in a measured tone, "If I were him, I would probably plant one in every plantation owner and their heirs. That would indirectly control all plantation settlements. Then I'd pick a few easily manageable individuals among them to serve as servers for computational power and backups, as well as contingencies."
Coincidentally, most settlements in Jinhe City were of that type; places with relatively decentralized power like Hope Town were an extreme minority.
In fact, that applied not just to Jinhe City, but to all of Jinchuan Province.
The lackeys kept by Boulder City's nobility had developed virtually every exploitable market here, reshaping them to their liking.
That way, when executing his plans, Luo Qian only needed to mobilize a tiny fraction of his pawns, while the vast majority could remain safely hidden in the shadows.
Whether giving everyone a thorough examination or executing everyone here, the workload was virtually impossible.
No wonder he had discarded a pawn like Zhao Tiangan without the slightest hesitation...
He had long since laid an invisible, intangible web that encompassed more than ninety percent of the survivors in Jinhe City.
Looking at the contemplative Chu Guang, You'er gave a faint smile. "Very much the Torch's style, isn't it? The Holy Son is merely a nominal leader, a spiritual totem. The plans are formulated by every Forerunner who enters Sanctuary."
"And in each parish, the Forerunner is the Holy Son exercising divine authority, the totem revered by believers. The actual execution falls to every Apostle connected to Sanctuary and the countless guided believers."
Something suddenly occurred to Chu Guang, and he asked, "Right now, are you You'er, or Luo Qian?"
You'er fell silent for a long time.
It was a difficult question to answer.
If he pushed all the blame onto a devil living in his heart, it might indeed lessen his guilt.
But was that truly the case?
After a long while, he shook his head with a bitter smile.
"I don't know."
"Perhaps... a bit of both."
...
The door to the confinement cell closed once more.
Following behind Chu Guang, Lü Bei quickened his pace slightly to match his stride and asked in a low voice, "How should we deal with him?"
Chu Guang replied offhandedly, "That depends on him. Actually, rather than handing him over to Enterprise for research, I prefer keeping this pawn by my side."
Of course, if the Supreme Council proved interested in the secrets inside the man, Chu Guang wouldn't mind roping in his old friends from the East Coast.
In any case, across such a distance, Enterprise was unlikely to send investigators here themselves; in the end, they would still have to rely on the Alliance as the local authority.
Lü Bei looked at Chu Guang in confusion. "Is there any point to doing that?"
To be frank, he didn't quite understand why Chu Guang had wasted so much breath on that prisoner. He himself had ten thousand ways to make the man compliant.
He wouldn't even need Enterprise's technology.
Chu Guang could roughly guess what the young man was thinking and said with a smile, "Of course there is. You heard him, didn't you? Every bionic chip is Sanctuary, and Luo Qian lives inside each one. The chip in that man is no exception, and we just spent half an hour negotiating with him."
Glancing at the time on his VM, he continued, "This is actually a good start. Haven't you noticed? That man has gradually begun to doubt whether the extreme ideal he championed is truly correct... And just as he said, both personalities—You'er and Luo Qian—coexist within his body."
"His decisions are actually made jointly by the two of them."
"It's just that his subconscious cannot tell them apart."
The memory extractor had already combed through all of You'er's memories, yet it still hadn't located the specific coordinates of Sanctuary or the method to destroy it.
That meant the memory wasn't in his biological brain at all, but cached in the bionic chip inside his skull.
Now that You'er had voluntarily offered up the information, it was clearly not just his own decision, but also that of one of Luo Qian's avatars.
Otherwise, even if You'er had the intention to confess, he wouldn't have been able to.
When confronted with unanswerable questions, a crack had appeared in the psychological defenses of both souls. That was why Chu Guang considered it a promising beginning.
Upon hearing Chu Guang's explanation, Lü Bei's eyes suddenly lit up.
"I get it! As long as the chip in his head exchanges data with the external Luo Qian, that thought will be transmitted to... Sanctuary where Luo Qian resides?"
Just like hiding a bomb inside a parcel and delivering it right into Luo Qian's hands!
That was the only analogy he could think of, but the more he thought about it, the more plausible it seemed, and his eyes grew brighter.
As expected of the Administrator!
Lü Bei looked at Chu Guang with even greater reverence.
Chu Guang, however, chuckled at the young man's interpretation.
"It's nowhere near as simple as you make it sound. If words alone could solve problems, there would have been no need to fly the Heart of Steel all the way out here."
Lü Bei blinked. "Ah, it won't work?"
Chu Guang shook his head. "At the end of the day, data cached on a single terminal cannot overwrite an entire network's data."
It was just like how data cached on a terminal by Xiao Qi wouldn't overwrite the main server's data just because it had been disconnected for a while.
Luo Qian did not use a fixed main server to store his data, choosing instead to disperse his entire self across bionic chips implanted into various brains.
The advantage was that his primary host couldn't be located and destroyed, but it also came with a fatal flaw.
When the living environments of the vast majority of his 'avatars' underwent fundamental shifts, and he could no longer brainwash them using psychic interference devices, this immense network formed of countless nodes could easily be subverted from the ground up.
Ultimately, bionic chips relied on human brains to exist. Without a psychic interference device, the two influenced each other.
At the very least, the fuzzy computational processes that formed personality had to run on a human brain... Chu Guang had learned all this from Yin Fang.
Lü Bei looked at Chu Guang blankly, scratching the back of his head in embarrassment.
"I'm sorry, my Lord... I didn't quite catch that. How about you just tell me what to do?"
Chu Guang smiled. "Put simply, that bastard hiding in Sanctuary believes this wasteland is beyond saving, that the world must be destroyed once before it can be reborn."
"Since they cling to such a foolish notion, we'll just show them how we do things!"
Didn't that fellow think this world was beyond hope?
Then let him witness the Alliance's way!
From mutants to slaveholders, Chu Guang would eliminate their troubles here one by one.
When that time came, he wanted to see how that fellow could shamelessly claim that the world was 'beyond saving.'
First things first...
Chu Guang thought for two seconds and said, "Pinecone Wood Farm is in trouble. Contact the Army Command for me and have them immediately deploy a detachment there."
If Zhao Tiangan and the Apostles weren't the only chip holders, it meant the Luo Qian outside still had countless eyes stationed in Pinecone Wood Farm.
With the psychic interference device shut down, the communication blackout there had lifted.
For all they knew, they might try to sneak mutants directly inside.
After all, as the man himself had said, a tunnel led outside from the church basement—but he had never said it was the only one.
Lü Bei's expression turned stern at once. Without asking questions, he accepted the order without hesitation.
"I'll go right away!"
Watching Lü Bei hurry off, a thought suddenly struck Chu Guang.
Come to think of it...
Today happened to be the third day.
"Wait."
Hearing the Administrator's voice, Lü Bei halted and turned around respectfully.
"Do you have any further instructions, my Lord?"
Chu Guang smiled faintly.
"Our opponents are likely mutants."
"Send the brothers from the Jungle Corps over!"
Chapter 588